About
Professor Roger Giner-Sorolla completed his undergraduate degree at Cornell University and was awarded his PhD in Social Psychology from New York University in 1996. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Virginia and two year-long contracts, he joined the University of Kent in 2001. He was promoted to Professor in 2013, and has also been Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology since 2016.
Roger is an advocate of transparency in scientific reporting and has written several articles and editorials in support of improved reporting guidelines and pre-registration. He has taught Master's statistics and methodology since 2001 at Kent. He is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and a member of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology.
Research interests
After an early career focused on attitudes components and information processing, Professor Roger Giner-Sorolla's core research interests are currently in moral emotions, specifically the self-condemning emotions of guilt and shame, and the other-condemning ones of anger, contempt and disgust. He studies the related topics of intergroup apologies, dehumanisation, and emotionally driven prejudice. As a side interest, he is pursuing research on the ironic enjoyment of music and other aesthetic experiences.
Key publications
- Russell, P.S., & Giner-Sorolla, R. (2013). Bodily-moral disgust: What it is, how it is different from anger and why it is an unreasoned emotion. Psychological Bulletin, 139, 328-351.
- Zaiser, E., & Giner-Sorolla, R. (2013). Saying sorry: Shifting obligation after conciliatory acts satisfies perpetrator group members. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105, 585-604.
- Russell, P.S., & Giner-Sorolla, R. (2011). Moral anger, but not moral disgust, responds to intentionality. Emotion, 11, 233-240.
- Giner-Sorolla, R., & Espinosa, P. (2011). Social cueing of guilt by anger and shame by disgust. Psychological Science, 22, 49-53.
Grants and Awards
| 2013-14 | R. Giner-Sorolla
ESRC
Evaluation of Emotion Regulation of Others and Self (EROS)
| £15,000 |
| October 2009 | R Giner-Sorolla, M Van Vugt and S Derbyshire
ESRC/MRC
Guilt and self-control in indivual and social dilemmas | £62,000 |
| June 2009 | R Giner-Sorolla and M Weick
ESRC
UK Social Cognition Network | £32,240 |
| May 2009 | R Giner-Sorolla and M Van Vugt
ESRC
The Social Guilt Hypothesis | £167,855 |
| June 2006 | R Giner-Sorolla
University of Kent
Promising Scholars Award |
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| June 2005 | R Giner-Sorolla
Wellcome Trust
Vacation Research Scholarship |
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| 2005-2006 | R Giner-Sorolla
ESRC
The recipient’s view of compunction between groups | £45,000 |
| 2005-2007 | R Giner-Sorolla
British Academy Small Grant
Are affectively based attitudes stronger, faster, and more automatic? | £7,500 |
| 2005-2006 | R Giner-Sorolla
ESRC
Anticipated and actual affect in prejudice control
| £95,000 |
| 2003-2004 | R Giner-Sorolla and R J Brown
ESRC
When and how does feeling guilty reduce prejudice? | £40,000 |
| 2003-2004 | R Giner-Sorolla and R J Brown
ESRC
When and how does feeling guilty reduce prejudice? | £40,000 |
| 2003-2004 | R Giner-Sorolla and R J Brown
European Science Foundation Workshop Award
New directions in intergroup emotions (workshop conducted in September 2004) |
Supervision
Professor Giner-Sorolla is available to supervise PhD candidates with a clear vision of what they want to study that has some fit with his research interests - broadly speaking, morally relevant emotions, collective apologies, or the other topics listed above.
Current research students
Past research students
- Dr Heather Rolfe
- Dr Tom Kupfer (University of Kent 50th Anniversary Research Scholarship): A reputation management and signalling account of moral disgust and moral contagion (2018)
- Dr Darren McGee: Antecedents of shame and guilt in self-control, and harm (2017)
- Dr Sarah Frisby-Osman (University of Kent 50th Anniversary Research Scholarship): Violent thugs or vulnerable youth? Reshaping how we think of gang members: An examination into their emotional and mental health needs (2020) (2nd supervisor)
- Dr John Sabo (School of Psychology Departmental Studentship): The Fictive Pass Asymmetry: Condemnation of harm, but not purity, is mitigated by fictional contexts (2017)
- Dr Stine Lokkeberg (2017)
- Dr Valeschka Guerra: Individual and cultural differences in bases for moral judgment (Degree awarded July 2009)
- Dr Roberto Gutierrez: Anger and disgust in moral judgment (Degree awarded July 2007)
- Dr Neil McClatchie: Guilt, self-control, and the brain
- Dr Pascale Russell: Disgust, anger, and emotional justification
- Dr Erica Zaiser: Reception of intergroup apologies by apologizing group members
- Dr Arielle Sagrillo Scarpati (CAPES Foundation): The role of culture and morality on men's acceptance of sexual aggression myths and perpetration of rape in Brazil and the United Kingdom (2018) (2nd supervisor)
- Dr Pelin Gul (School of Psychology Departmental Studentship): Masculine honour leads to greater reputational concerns about gender conformity (2017) (2nd supervisor)
- Dr Tom Page (School of Psychology Departmental Studentship): Sexual harassment: Investigating the role of social-cognitive mechanisms and group-based emotions (2015) (2nd supervisor)
Professional
Membership of professional organisations
- American Psychological Society
- Society for Personality and Social Psychology
- Society for Experimental Social Psychology
- European Association for Social Psychology
- International Society for Research on Emotions
Editing
- Associate editor: Personality and Social Psychology Compass (2009-)
- Associate editor: Group Processes and Intergroup Relations (2010-)
- Co-editor (with Eliot Smith & Diane Mackie) of special issue on intergroup emotions, Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, January 2007.
- Editorial board member: Basic and Applied Social Psychology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Invited articles
- “Hostile media bias,” “Guilty pleasures,” and “Grim Necessities,” Encyclopedia of Social Psychology, R. J. Baumeister & K. D. Vohs, eds. (in press)
- “Attitudes Towards Prostitution,” Historical Encyclopedia of Prostitution, M. H. Ditmore, ed. (2006).
Invited teaching
- Co-teacher of workshops at the International Graduate College summer schools, Menaggio, Italy, April 2006, and Schloss Hasenwinkel, Germany, April 2009.
- Workshops on experimental design and affective attitude measurement, ESRC Research Methods Festival, Oxford University, July 2008.
- Workshop on experimental design, British Psychology Society Social Section Conference, Canterbury, Kent, September 2007.
- Seminar on intergroup emotions, University of Sussex, Spring 2007.
- Selected symposia and meetings organised
- September, 2010: Co-organiser (with Mario Weick) of ESRC consulting seminar (SCONET), "Social Cognition and Neuroscience," University of Kent.
- October, 2009: Co-organiser (with Mario Weick) of IGC/ESRC consulting seminar (SCONET), "Groups and Social Cognition," University of Kent.
- June, 2006: Organiser of symposium, “Beyond Guilty Feelings: Consequences of Group-Based Guilt and its Alternatives” at the Society for the Psychological Study of Social issues meeting, Long Beach, California.
- October, 2005: Co-organiser of symposium, “New Directions in Intergroup Emotions” (with Diane Mackie and Eliot Smith) at the Society for Experimental Social Psychology meeting, San Diego, California
- July, 2005: Chair of symposium, Affect in attitudes: Its role in social value judgment and information processing at the general meeting of the European Association for Experimental Social Psychology, Würzburg, Germany.
- September, 2004: Scientific organiser (with Rupert Brown) of ESF exploratory workshop, "New directions in the social psychology of intergroup emotions," Canterbury, UK.
- February, 2003: Chair of symposium, Quick to judge, slower to change? Affect in judgments of stigmatized people and acts, at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology meeting, Universal City, CA.
Other academic activities
- Reviewer pool member: European Science Foundation; ESRC Peer review College; US National Science Foundation.
- External examiner, MSc in Research Methods, University of Liverpool, 2007-2009.
- Director of Graduate Studies, School of Psychology, University of Kent, 2008-2016.
